An Obituary: Pavel Grachev 1948 – 2012

Former Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, also known as Mercedes Pasha, died on Sunday, 23 September. Perhaps he ate poisoned mushrooms at his birthday party; perhaps he died of complications of diabetes; one of his sons said he had high blood sugar. The truth of his death is likely emotional and intellectual: Russian men indulge a deadly combination of self-pity and self-indulgence that kills far too many of them far too soon. It is one of Russia’s tragedies, and a personal one for Grachev, that he lived so long, that he did not die as a young man in Afghanistan or a training accident, for he was a beautiful, brave, useful junior officer. It is a shame he is not so remembered by those who knew him and loved him. Instead, Grachev was not simply one of those who lost his way in the collapse of the country he was born into and knew, he was so placed that he helped his country lose its way, and in its loss of direction, lose so many lives. In a deep and real sense of the word, he betrayed his country.

Pavel Grachev betrayed his country in two ways. As an incompetent Defense Minister, he got a lot of Russian men, boys, really, killed in the cauldron that was Chechnya, along with many more Chechens during the first Chechen War. The New York Times reports that he fought in Chechnya; he did not. He let others, the children and grandchildren of those who did not make that war, fight and die there.

During the First Chechen War (1994 – 1996), Russian integrity seemed to depend upon crushing the Chechen rebellion, and you can make a terribly serious and sad case that Yeltsin was probably right—in the moral sense of that word—to go to war in Chechnya. What was wrong about Yeltsin’s attempt to bring Chechnya to heel was that he did it in an incompetent manner. He appointed a Defense Minister willing to tell him what he wanted to hear, that it would be easy and cheap.

That man was Pavel Grachev, who promised to crush the Chechen rebellion in a few hours with a single regiment of paratroopers. He was wrong. The First Chechen War ended two years later in Russian defeat and a peace treaty; the issue was reopened in late 1999 and the Chechen separatism defeated with a great deal of brutality. This time, however, the bloodshed was not useless. Which brings us to Grachev’s second betrayal of his country: his corruption. He tolerated embezzlement, the diversion of official resources for personal gain, and criminal abuse of troops, thus adding to the level of corruption, violence and cruelty in Russia. Grachev’s incompetence and corruption did his country huge harm—and grossly compounded the harm Chechen guerillas were able to inflict on the Russian Army.

In short, Grachev sought promotion and was promoted far above his competence. Upon obtaining high rank, he gave in to the avarice and anarchy of the times to sell out his service and his country for his own personal gain. His incompetence and corruption, which fueled each other and simple inter-human cruelty, are what Russians remember Yeltsin for. This, and the collapse of life-expectancy, the disappearance of life savings, the vanishing of entire industries, the scourge of organized and disorganized crime. And this is why there is no real question that at least a very large minority of Russians support Putin. When their country was on the brink of an abyss such as America has not looked into since the Civil War—an abyss Russians know something about—he brought them back. All the lives that were not lost, all the suffering Putin averted and cut short, weighs heavy in the scales. What also weighs heavy in the scales is that the opposition at this point does not have a serious, coherent agenda. “Free Pussy Riot!” may be a satisfying slogan (Why?) but it has nothing to do with good governance. Mouthing such slogans do not create your capacity to help create that governance as a citizen, nor the alliance with a broad, reliable base of support that a government needs to tackle deep, entrenched problems.

There’s a lesson for Americans in this, too. There is a lot of anger in America, pain, humiliation and despair and the very real, very legalized corruption of our economy. No, we do not have division commanders selling weapons to organized crime, as happened in the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, we have poured trillions of dollars into two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and every single major military procurement program is seriously troubled. Aircraft procurement and ship-building and maintenance are particular obscenities. Now, on the eve of the election, the Republican Party offers only an incoherent, proven-incompetent, thus dangerous, and thoroughly neo-conservative foreign policy and very expensive defense policy that will only further harm America. This at a time when most Americans are neither eager for further adventures abroad nor particularly eager to dump more bucketloads of money into the Pentagon.

Pavel Grachev’s death is one of these moments in Russian history that is also a mirror for contemporary America. And the reflection is ugly: past Russian suffering that most Americans really can’t imagine, current and future American suffering that while less in sheer numbers of deaths is still very, very real.